BEEBEERY BLIGHTS. 81 



When mixed with the flour it is excessively- 

 disagreeable ; but whether it is injurious to 

 health is not quite decided, though it probably 

 does produce ill effects on the constitution. 



No other corn plant but wheat is affected 

 by bunt in this country, but there are several 

 fungi in existence attacking seeds of cultivated 

 plants in the same way. Wheat does not 

 afford a solitary instance of tlfis kind of dis- 

 ease. Lately, in Africa, near Algiers, thera 

 has been found a uredo, which destroys the 

 seeds of a species of Lucerne just as bunt does 

 wheat. We might also enumerate eight or 

 nine other kinds of vegetables which have their 

 parts of fructification utterly ruined by dif- 

 ferent uredines analogous to those producing 

 smut and bunt in corn. The maize is subject 

 to a large uredo ; the panicum of Egypt has its 

 parasite also in the shape of uredo; while an- 

 other kind enters grasses, and is propagated 

 within the sheaths. 



Almost every farmer will say, that wherever 

 the berberry-tree grows it produces fungal dis- 

 eases in corn. The common fungus on the 

 leaves of this shrub is the cecidium, and it looks, 

 at a casual glance, very much like the rust, 

 or uredo, of the rose, when it comes in large 



